Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE ARMED INTELLECTUALS 21insulters by an example of courage, he shot Eisner down in the midst ofhis guards on the open street. A second later he himself lay on theground, with a bullet through his chest. Eisner's secretary, Fechenbach,sprang forward and saved the assassin from being trampled by the bootsof the infuriated soldiers. A mass insurrection broke out, a sovietrepublic was proclaimed. The Communists seized power — withoutbloodshed. In the place where Eisner fell, his picture was pasted to thewall; a Red Army man stood beside it, and all passers-by had to salutethe picture. The members of the Thule Society soaked a bag of flour inthe sweat of two bitches in heat, someone 'accidentally' dropped the bagin front of the picture, the flour clung to the ground and the walls; dogsgathered by the dozens, the picture and the guards silently vanished.This repulsive story is told here only because those responsible publiclyboasted of it.An army marched against revolutionary Munich. It was a motleytroop; remnants of disbanding regiments; free corps, newly formed ofunemployed soldiers and young people eager for adventure. In a villagesouth of Munich a labor battalion of Russian war prisoners, forgottenthough peace had been signed with Russia months before, fell into theirhands. Russians? Must be Bolsheviki. What else would they be? FiftythreeRussian prisoners met their death in a sandpit over thismisapprehension. In another village, a lieutenant asked the priest onwhom he was billeted if he didn't know a few Red suspects in hiscommunity. Oh, yes, he knew some, and he named twelve, all of whom,as came to light in a later trial, were quite harmless individuals, who inthe troubled times had somehow frightened the priest. On its march thetroop dragged along twelve workers, drove them into the courtyard ofthe Munich slaughterhouse, and shot them against a wall with severalhundred other unfortunates. The slaughter lasted for several days.For on May 2, 1919, Munich had fallen to the White Army, the socalledgovernment troops. The Red regime had survived but a fewweeks. With a single exception, its record was free of blood. Thisexception regards the Thule Society, which had formed a small undergroundfree corps of its strongest members, to work behind the Redlines. The free corps was armed and thus constituted what since